“Disgruntled” Bain Employee Never Worked for Bain Controlled Company

The Democratic National Convention on Wednesday featured three speakers billed as “former employees of companies controlled by Bain Capital.”
They each told compelling stories about jobs lost, allegedly because of the actions of Bain under Romney’s leadership.

But it turns out one of those employees never actually worked for a company controlled by Bain Capital.

David Foster was supposedly one of those former employees on the convention schedule. He told the story about 750 steelworkers who lost their jobs when the Bain-controlled company GST steel filed for bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

“In 2001, with GST bankrupt and Romney still CEO of Bain, I stood in front of hundreds of steelworkers in their 50s and 60s, and retirees in their 70s and 80s, and told them Romney and Bain had broken their promises. Jobs, vacation pay, severance, health insurance and pension benefits that were promised — they were all gone,” he said. Read his full speech here

But Foster, according to a former spokesman for GST Steel, never actually worked for the company.

“David Foster was never an employee of GST Steel’s Kansas City plant. He was employed by the United Steelworkers of America as their regional union director to represent GST Steel, but was not employed at our facility,” according to BC Huselton, who was head of HR at GST.

Instead, Foster was a union organizer, who negotiated for workers that did work for the company.

Foster explained in his remarks that he was an organizer during his dealings with GST Steel. But it is not clear from the remarks that he never worked for a company controlled by Bain.

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